Re: [PATCH 4/8] unify paravirt parts of system.h

From: Rafael J. Wysocki
Date: Sun Dec 16 2007 - 19:08:27 EST


On Saturday, 15 of December 2007, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> * Pavel Machek <pavel@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > Linux never uses that register. The only user is suspend
> > > save/restore, but that' bogus because it wasn't ever initialized by
> > > Linux in the first place. It could be probably all safely removed.
> >
> > It probably is safe to remove... but we currently support '2.8.95
> > kernel loads/resumes 2.6.24 image'... which would break if 2.8 uses
> > cr8.
> >
> > So please keep it if it is not a big problem.
>
> hm, so __save_processor_state() is in essence an ABI? Could you please
> also send a patch that documents this prominently, in the structure
> itself?

Hmm, I'm not sure if it really is an ABI part. It doesn't communicate anything
outside of the kernel in which it is defined.

The problem is, though, that if kernel A is used for resuming kernel B, and
kernel B doesn't save/restore everything it will need after the resume, then
things will break if kernel A modifies that. So, yes, we'll need to document
that explicitly.

Greetings,
Rafael
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